


In Memoriam

by Badwolf36



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Guilt, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:57:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwolf36/pseuds/Badwolf36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles discovers what happened to the Camaro. Specifically, what happened to the money that came from Derek selling the Camaro.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Memoriam

**Title:** In Memoriam

**Fandom:** Teen Wolf 

**Rating:** G

**Characters:** Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale (mentioned), Scott McCall (mentioned), Laura Hale (mentioned)

**Word count:** 801

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Teen Wolf or any related properties.

**Summary:** Stiles discovers what happened to the Camaro. Specifically, what happened to the money that came from Derek selling the Camaro.

 

 

Stiles is on his laptop on Fastweb.com, idly searching for scholarships. It’s a lazy afternoon after school, which is fairly rare these days, but he’s set himself up at his desk with a Mountain Dew, a bowl of Cheetos, and an afternoon dose of Adderall, so he’s good to go.

He’s still wearing the shirts he wore to school, red plaid and the “Zombies Need Brain Food Too” one, but he’s ditched his jeans for his favorite pair of black BHS lacrosse sweats. He has no idea what he’s going to do after he graduates (if he survives that long), but he knows that his dad isn’t going to be able to foot the full bill, no matter how much he’d like to be able to.

He’s already bookmarked the requirements for a few police union scholarships when he comes across one under the ‘Matched’ tab that makes his heart do a funny twist in his chest: “The Laura Hale Memorial Scholarship.”

With a quick click, he’s onto another page, where he reads:

_The Laura Hale Memorial Scholarship_

_Amount: $1,000_

_This scholarship is open to any student of a California high school with plans to attend a 2-year or 4-year college._

_Laura Hale was a young woman who rose from tragedy to become a leader. She loved her family, practical jokes, and the Camaro she inherited from her mother. Her life was cut tragically short, and this scholarship was established in her memory so that her desire to always see good in the world benefits someone else with the same vision._

_Candidates for this scholarship must demonstrate good leadership qualities, good academics, and submit a 750-word essay on family, either of blood or of choice, and how they have affected your life._

Stiles slams the lid of his laptop shut and curls his fingers around the edge of his desk. His breath wheezes oddly when he exhales, as if he’s taken a shoulder to the gut during a lacrosse game, and he can’t quite figure out why he’s reacting so strongly.

When Derek had sold the Camaro and come driving by in the Toyota, Stiles and Scott had both agreed that they were docking the Alpha major cool points. After all, you didn’t sell a muscle car for something that practical until you had kids, which had sparked a somewhat panicked conversation about whether Derek had knocked some chick up two towns over. But for all their musings, they had never asked why Derek had sold the Camaro, and so they never had reason to ask what he had done with the money.

He fumbles for his phone, pulling up a new text message before his fingers freeze above his phone’s screen.

He could tell Scott. It’s an explanation they hadn’t been looking for to a mystery that they had only vaguely cared about solving.

He could text Derek. Tell him how he thought it was a nice thing to do in his sister’s memory. Or how he wished he could establish something like that for his mom. Or at least tell him that he understood where the Camaro had gone.

In the end, he does neither of those things. He presses the lock button for his phone and sets it back on his desk.

He takes a deep breath, and thinks of the girl he and Scott dug up next to the burnt-out shell of the Hale house. He thinks of how gleeful he had been to go looking for her corpse, because that’s all she had been to him. A corpse, a body, something interesting.

Not someone’s sister. Not someone who drove a Camaro and had dreams and became an Alpha after most of her family burned to death.

Stiles had looked up a picture of her, after. Her eyes had been half-shut in a candid yearbook shot, just enough to avoid the werewolf eye lens flare thing, he’d assumed. She’s been smiling and laughing and beautiful, all the things she hadn’t been when he’d stared at her lifeless eyes and half of her body.

And he understands, maybe for the first time, that Laura had meant something to her family. To Derek. And he’d treated her like…he feels sick thinking of how he’d treated her. If someone had done that to his mom…it doesn’t bear thinking about it.

He looks at his phone again, fingers still itching to tap out some sort of message.

And so he opens a new Word document, and sets his fingers to the keys as he resolves himself to honor Laura in his own way.

_“I thought I knew what family meant when my mom died,_ ” he starts his essay, _“but family isn’t only blood. Family is people we choose, people who choose us, and people who save us, from peril or ourselves.”_


End file.
